Takes and trash talk from both ALL sides of the NHL's most obscure PATHETIC* rivalry

* Thanks, Kevin Lowe!

Tuesday, May 30, 2006

One more stats rant: wanna make a million dollars?

(Author's note: I still don't know what I'm doing on this blog; I go from silly to serious to outraged to drunk-and-outraged. I'm still trying to mix it up, but I got one more nerdy task to accomplish.)

And that is to tell somebody with skill how to make a million dollars.

Step One Go here. This is the play-by-play of tonight's CAR-BUF game. They exist through NHL.com Stats for all NHL games from '02-'03 to present. Somehow find a way to access them all (I think there should be a pattern in the naming convention).

Step Two Use all this data to form a clean data table for all this. All events and all games should be given unique ID numbers. Record whatever data is available for each event, including shift charts if you're really bold.

Step Three This might be tricky, but things should also be 'known' or 'queriable' about each event, such as the score, or how long it has been 5-on-5. These things can be appended on to each line or if there is a better way, do that. Also if you can somehow figure each team's record at the time of each event, that might be helpful also.

Step Four Answer the following questions:

  1. How much more likely is a team down by one going to get a power play than take a penalty?
  2. Same question, but only on the road.
  3. Same question, but only Eastern Conference teams.
  4. Same question, but only in the 3rd period.
  5. How long into a power play is the average PPG scored?
  6. How long after a faceoff is the average goal scored? Is there a cluster shortly after faceoffs?
  7. Same question, but only after icings.
  8. Given two specific teams and a tied score, who is likely to score first?
  9. How likely is it that the other team scores next?
  10. Compare pre-lockout to post-lockout, regular season to postseason, etc.
Step Five Once you know more than anybody about the last three years of NHL hockey, you're sure to make a million dollars*. Good luck with that, and if you make more than a mil, you can email me some.

(Oh, and if you've already done this on your own, you can owe me.)

* it might be Canadian dollars

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